SKIN OF GLASS Documentary Screening and Conversation

A poetic and personal cinematic meditation on displacement, inequality and loss, Skin of Glass follows filmmaker Denise Zmekhol’s journey after discovering that her late father's most celebrated work as an architect, a modernist glass skyscraper in the heart of São Paulo affectionately known as the Pele de Vidro (“Skin of Glass”), has become occupied by hundreds of homeless families.

The building was designed by 32-year-old Roger Zmekhol, a Syrian immigrant to Brazil. Conceived in the vibrant era of Bossa Nova and Cinema Novo, and constructed in the early days of a US-backed dictatorship that would hold power for two decades, the building’s dramatic transformations mirror Brazil itself during eras of darkness, transformation, and rebirth.

Zmekhol’s initially personal quest to reconnect with the father she lost at 14 forces her to face a growing global crisis: one in six people in the world are homeless. In the wake of a shocking tragedy, she ultimately connects with the building’s residents and comes to understand how São Paulo’s most vulnerable residents found shelter within a modernist icon of Brazil’s golden age of architecture. Delicately interweaving the personal and political, SKIN OF GLASS is a searing portrait of a country in crisis captured through the story of a father and daughter and the built environment of São Paulo where their lives, memories, and dreams overlap.
The film is 90 minutes long. Following the film, there will be a 20 minute conversation and 10 minutes for Q&A.

Photos courtesy of ZD Films

Denise Zmekhol is an Arab-Brazilian award-winning producer and director of documentary films and media projects. Zmekhol’s documentary films, commercials, and innovative transmedia projects have been recognized for their elegant visual style and deft storytelling. Children of the Amazon, supported by ITVS and broadcasted on PBS, received multiple awards at festivals around the world. Zmekhol also co-produced and co-directed Digital Journey, an Emmy Award winning PBS series.

Zmekhol is the director and producer of Skin of Glass, which received funding from ITVS, the National Endowment for the Arts, IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund, Latino Public Broadcasting and several private foundations. She presented the story of Skin of Glass at the Pop-Up Magazine Spring and TEDWomen.

Joseph Becker is the Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where his recent exhibitions include Art of Noise (2024), Marshall Brown Projects: Dequindre Civic Academy (2023), Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Strips of Stripes (2023), and Tauba Auerbach: S v Z (2022). His recent publications include Tauba Auerbach: S v Z (SFMOMA/D.A.P., 2020), and The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment, and Idealism (Prestel/DelMonico, 2018), and contributions to Lebbeus Woods: Exquisite Experiments, Early Years (Wiley, 2024), and Recurrent Visions: The Architecture of Marshall Brown Projects (Princeton Architectural Press, 2022).

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